Art Magic

Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, was a Chaldean by birth, and though he protested against the idolatrous practices of his own land, and voluntarily quitted it, to found a purer and more monotheistic form of worship, still he impressed upon his descendants many ideas, derived from the astronomical religion of the Chaldeans, especially their reverence for fire, the custom of rearing altars to Deity of upright stones, their system of sacrificial offerings and direct communion with Tutelary Spirits, believed to have special charge over nations and peoples.

Josephus affirms that Abraham went into Egypt, and there became an auditor of the Priests, who greatly admired him for his wisdom. It was probably from Egypt that Abraham derived his ideas of the sacredness of circumcision, a rite which he enjoined as the most important of all religious obligations upon his posterity. His immediate descendants were only herdsmen, and far less instructed than himself, yet they openly communed with spiritual beings, and received counsel and direction through dreams and visions.

Making all due allowance for the necessity of interpreting much of the Bible by cabalistic methods, that is to say, by deeming the words written, designed to veil rather than to express their meaning, we must either treat the existence of the Jews and their whole history as mythical, or allow that they form one of the most remarkable specimens of Theocratic government as the world has ever known.

This people migrated and settled, directed their wanderings, even transacted their business, and governed their Tribes, under the direction of Angels and the inspiration received through dreams, visions or oracular communications. With the Jewish Scriptures so familiarly known to every child in Christendom, it would be useless to review its Spiritism in detail; it is enough to say then, that every page is a record of super-mundane signs, tokens, open intercourse with spiritual beings, and all those phases so familiarly known in the nineteenth century as "Spiritualism."

To judge of the origin and characteristics of Jewish Spiritism, it must be remembered that the people had been ruled over in turn by the Kings of Mesopotamia, Moab, Midian, Ammon, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Syria, Macedonia, and Rome.

The various forms of worship practiced in each of these nations, left their impress on Jewish Theogony, rendering it far more than a transcript of the beliefs then prevailing throughout the East, than a concrete system of any one nation's religion.

From the Jewish Scriptures may be gathered much information concerning those Priestly rites and sacerdotal ceremonies borrowed from Egypt, but of which that land preserves no written descriptions. The early chronicles of the Hebrews may be regarded as a complete representation of Egyptian Theosophy, the Jehovah being one of the Eloihim, or Tutelary Deities of Egypt, their Tabernacle, Ark, Priestly order, rites, ceremonials and sacred garments being all exact copies from Egyptian models.

During the prophetic dispensation, an interregnum occurs, marked by the struggle between a few inspired men to restore a pure form of Monotheistic worship, and the idolatrous tendencies of the people to imitate their neighbors, who throughout Arabia and Syria, practiced the lowest forms of Solar and Sex worship. The Babylonish captivity leaving its strong admixture of Chaldean ideas, follows, after which and during the Roman rule arises that sublime form of pure religion, so thoroughly identical with the doctrines of the Essenes, inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth.

Under this inspired and holy teacher, the Spiritism of his wonderful works became united to the Spiritualism of his Divine life and doctrines, and so continued through the apostolic dispensation of his immediate followers, although it became modified by the commanding intellect of Paul, who, having been brought up in the sect of Pharisees, and instructed in the subtleties of Gnosticism, introduced into his otherwise kindly yet exalted Christianity, much of that ancient mysticism which distinguished the schools in which he had been educated.

Amongst the Jews, as with all other nations of antiquity, the line of demarcation was strongly drawn between the Priests and the Prophets. Abraham and his descendants, were evidently what would now be termed "Spirit Mediums," for their converse with spirits, their dreams, trances and visions are all described as of purely natural occurrence, yet they added to these gifts the practices of magic by building altars for burnt offerings and other sacrificial rites.

Moses was both Prophet and Priest. His extraordinary spiritual endowments might have been greatly exaggerated by the egotistical style employed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, still the fact of his high inspiration and open communion with the Tutelary Deity Jehovah, can hardly be doubted, without questioning the fact of his agency in the Jewish history altogether.

This admitted, his power as a magician affords a stupendous picture of that esoteric wisdom, in which the Egyptian Priesthood were so well versed. His contest with the Magians of Egypt, his conclusion amidst the awful mysteries of Sinai, his establishment of Priestly laws, ordinances and rites; in a word, the whole order of his wonderful and sublime history, gives a strange insight into the almost God-like powers with which a Hierophant of the most ancient mysteries becomes endowed. Another, though a far inferior example of the dual powers of Prophet and Magian, is described in the person of Balaam, who, though an enchanter and diviner, one who was evidently familiar with the magical arts then so common in the East, who was hired both to curse and bless, or by strong psychological will to procure good or evil fortune for pay, was yet in modern phrase a Spirit Medium, subject to trance and vision, and when under the Divine Spiritual afflatus, one who was compelled to speak as the spirit gave him utterance, though gold and silver were offered as inducements to prophesy to a contrary effect.

The immense importance attached to psychological power is manifested in numerous instances throughout the pages of the Bible. The curse and blessing so solemnly pronounced by Moses on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, were deemed as immutably prophetic as if they had been the utterances of the Deity in person. Curses and blessings were considered so potent in effect, that the trade of Balaam was commonly practiced, and Prophets were either solicited or hired to pronounce words of ban or blessing on enemies or friends, as was most desired. In the days of Samuel, schools of the Prophet were established, it being thought that young persons by mere association with these holy men, and by ministering to them as servitors, might partake of their Divine gift, and receive of their spirit by contact, or laying on of their hands. It was not considered derogatory in the days of Samuel, for Prophets to exercise their gifts of Seership for the recovery of lost property, and the custom of restoring to them for this purpose was considered just as legitimate as that of seeking oracular responses "from the Lord" through Urim and Thummim. On the Priestly modes of obtaining these responses, we shall speak in the concluding portion of this section; it is proper to notice, however, that whilst prophetic powers were evidently conferred upon certain individuals by natural endowment, and not by study or art, the Prophets of Israel led exceptional and devoted lives. They often retired into wilderness apart from the haunts of men; they observed long fasts, and subjected themselves to frequent penances, the latter more generally for the sins of others than themselves. They wore rough garments, most commonly a mantle composed of the skins of animals. Some amongst them were accustomed to wound their hands and rend their garments in prophetic frenzy. They spent much time in prayer, and were passionately addicted to the practice of music. Many indications appear throughout the Jewish Bible of the constant resort which the Prophets made to music, as a means of stimulating the prophetic afflatus, especially in the exorcism of evil spirits, and the rites of Temple worship.

There are many commentators on the Hebrew sacred writings who do not hesitate to affirm that such personages as Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and Jesus never existed, whilst Samson has been proved to be a mythical representation of the Greek Hercules, and Jeptha a paraphrase of the Greek Agamemnon.

The audacious transposition of ancient Heroes from their own lands into that of Judea by Jewish historians, and the bold plagiarisms of other nations' histories to sustain their own, does not alter the fact that at certain epochs of time, great and providential characters must have flourished and acted something of the parts set down for them. Moses, as we have already alleged, we believe to have been an Egyptian Priest - an opinion which is sustained by Manetho, a Greek historian who claims to have authentic knowledge on the subject. Still the part sustained by this remarkable man in the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, the enunciation of his noble code of laws, his establishment of the priestly ordinances, and the extraordinary spiritual influences which attended him, and enabled him to bring the Jews into direct and constant communion with their Tutelary Deity, are integral portions of history which cannot be blotted cut. Elijah, from his name signifying one of the houses of the sun, like his follower Elisha, has sometimes been deemed a mythical personage, a mere type of the Sun God. Even if the personality of both these exalted characters were to be resolved into allegory, it does not alter the fact that at certain periods of Jewish history, many wise, powerful, and spiritually endowed men arose, under whose scathing rebukes and sublime inspirations, the rebellious people were won back to the worship of one God, and the wise standards of government prescribed by Moses.

In the advent of Jesus of Nazareth a revolutionary change in Jewish history occurs, which could not have been effected without the intervention of just such a pure, high and holy teacher as he is represented to have been.

From the descriptions given by Philo and other contemporary historians of the Essenes, a sect of pure and holy men who arose about one hundred years before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, it has often been supposed that he was one of their number. The doctrines, manners and customs of this sect conformed in almost every particular to those of Jesus and his Disciples. Even the famous Sermon on the Mount becomes little else than a transcript of Essenian aphorisms, when the two are carefully compared. The same extraordinary similarity of doctrine and practice has been traced between this sect and that of the Sage Pythagoras, and the universality of the idea which marks the great and inspired lives of the Jewish and Samian Teachers, naturally suggests that each of them drew their opinions from the same Essenian model.

As to the identity of the Jewish Christ with the popular myth of the Eastern Sun God - we have no opinion to offer in this place.

The truth that at least twenty different incarnate Gods were celebrated in the East, and taught of in Greece, to each of whom was attributed a history similar in general details to that of the Christian's Messiah, but the still more significant facts that these various incarnations were all supposed to have preceded Jesus in the point of chronology, and that the miracles attributed to him had been sculptured in Temples gray with age before the date assigned for his birth, bring their own comment to every mind not closed against the light of reason by bigotry, or incapable of appreciating the truths of history from blind superstition.

Notwithstanding the fact that the worshipers of the Sun God in the personality of the Jewish Messiah, destroy faith in his very existence by the willful perversity with which they insist upon maintaining for him an impossible biography, the origin, growth and specialties of the Christian faith in Jerusalem, demand the interposition of a human founder, and point, with conclusive testimony, to the influence of a noble Essenian of precisely the character attributed to the meek and gentle Nazarene.

The biographies of Jesus were compiled long after his decease, and were evidently the work of men who, in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled in his person, interblended the records of his pure and holy ministry, with the miracles of that legend, which - as the history of the Sun God - had been so popularly engrafted into all religious systems throughout the East for thousands of years before the time of Jesus.

The true founder of Christian Theology was Paul. This indomitable Disciple was himself a Gnostic, and wrote in the true Cabalistic spirit of the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But to the immediate followers of the beloved Master, to those who had heard his voice, lived in his holy presence, shared his sufferings, and witnessed his exalted spiritual powers, Jesus was no mystery, his existence no myth. They had often marveled at his words, and failed to understand that when he spoke from the simple standpoint of his humanity, he was one of themselves, and represented himself only as an imperfect mortal; but when he was "in the spirit," as he doubtless often was, he spoke as if he had indeed lived before Abraham; as of the "Son of God," the mysterious and long-promised Messiah, who temporarily inspired, without being the actual personality of the man Jesus. The devotion which rose to enthusiasm, and subsequently to a faith which has survived the upheaval of dynasties, the rise and fall of empires, and the changes which have revolutionized the old earth and builded and rebuilded it again and again, was not founded on a myth, a mistake, or idle superstition.

When good, pure, divinely inspired and divinely acting men enter upon the scene, and this poor degraded humanity of ours can look up to such a one and feel his kind hands healing their sicknesses, and hear his tender tones compassioning them, and bringing them very near to the awful majesty of the unknown God, translating that majesty into the pitying and strictly human character of a Father, who can wonder that such a one was deemed of as a God, and invested with all the popular attributes of that mediatorial Deity, whose existence and occasional appearances on earth, incarnate in human form, had been taught and believed in for countless ages? The Jews were well acquainted with this popular idea, and their great theological teacher, Paul, obviously favored it; hence it cannot excite surprise that many of the early Christians were disposed to invest the memory of their beloved Master with the same divine attributes that had been assigned to many another great and good man before. Whatever the simple followers of Jesus may have deemed of his divinity, it was his gospel of love, his pure life, his divinely compassionate nature, that so endeared his memory to suffering human hearts, and sustained the faith of his disciples to preach his gospel amindst the fires of persecution and the tortures of martyrdom. But the simplicity and practical beauty of this gospel of love died out when it became entangled in the sophisms of learning, and identified with incomprehensible systems of metaphysical speculation.

The early Christian faith taught by the pure Essenian Jesus, perished about the time when Constantine the Great usurped its name and fame, in order to justify his own iniquities and atrocious murders. Its crucified remains were buried under the Athanasian Creed, and the ecclesiastical fables of the Council of Nice, and nothing of it was left but the name; the body without the soul, the letter without the spirit; the God without his humanity - the mystery without the meaning - nothing was left of the gospel of the loving Jesus, but the name.

We have made many allusions in this and former sections, to the Jewish Cabala, and it is now in order to give a brief notion of the origin and genius of this celebrated work.

Despite all the assertions of practical historians to the contrary, it is quite certain that the Jewish sacred writings, if not wholly lost or destroyed, were reduced to very few and scarce copies during the different seasons of captivity that so often overwhelmed the nation, despoiled the once glorious Temple of Solomon, and committed alike the books of the law and all the other sacred writings to the lames. This spirit of devastation was especially manifested before the Baylonish captivity. After the return of the exiles to their ruined City and desecrated Temple, the solemn duty of re-transcribing the Mosaic law devolved upon Ezra, a learned Priest, a most zealous Scribe, and one so highly esteemed in his generation, that he was commonly called the second founder of the law. Admiring Rabbis are still accustomed to say, "If Moses had not founded the law, Ezra was worthy to have done so."

In order to fulfill his difficult task with the most conscientious fidelity, Ezra not only transcribed the laws of which he had made a deep study during his period of captivity, but he gathered together the ancient men of his nation, consulted with them, carefully noted down the traditions which they had committed to memory, and sought in every direction to improve upon his own knowledge by the information thus acquired through oral tradition.

It was set from this circumstance that authoritative value came to be set on traditional records.

In process of time, as these traditions increased in number, and became easily stretched to suit the imagination of the narrators, or the temper of the times, the books of the law and the Prophets compiled by Ezra sank into insignificance compared to the superstitious veneration which to some minds clustered around these ever-growing traditions, and a sect of believers at length arose the Separatists or Pharisees, who absolutely pinned their faith and adjusted their lives, manners and actions entirely on the assumed authority of these traditions. This was the field in which Persian myths and Chaldean ideas where permitted to take root, until they almost supplanted the stern Monotheism of Abraham and Moses. Jesus frequently alludes to these traditions as making the law of Moses of no effect. It is from this source that the fantastic flights of Talmudic writers are drawn, and it is on the strength of these elastic oral teachings that the famous Cabala is founded. Cabalists and devoted admirers of these writings claim for them an antiquity ascending to Adam, and an origin stretching up to heaven. They trace the descent of this book to Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and with occasional flying visits back to Heaven from whence it came, straight on to the possession of a certain Hellenistic Jew, who, with a few followers, after having been banished for sedition to Alexandria, reappeared from exile about a century before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth.

One of the Cabalistic collections is called Zohar, or the Book of Light, and around this volume, the traditions cluster with immense enthusiasm.

The nature of Cabalistic writings we have already explained. They are for the most part, designed to mask, rather than reveal the true sense of the words, and this mystical style is assumed to be necessary in order to preserve sacred ideas from the vulgar, in short, not "to give pearls to swine," a favorite expression of the Cabalists.

A collection of Cabalistic writings was made in the second century, and some rare copies are still extant; from these we find that the writers enlarge much on the doctrines scattered throughout the East concerning Deity, the divine Trinity, which in its various phases, attributes powers and personalities, is exalted as the sublimest mystery of being. The Cabala discourses of the various emanations from Deity commencing with Adam Kadman, the Brahma of the Hindoos; the Osiris of the Egyptians; the Mithra of the Persians; the Logos, or Word, of the Greeks; the Divine Ensoph, or masculine Wisdom of Deity; and the Sophia, or Feminine principle of Creation. From thence it teaches of Hierarchies of celestial emanations, Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Splendors; Fallen Angels, Planetary Spirits, Evil Angels, Demons, Elementaries, Men, Worlds, Spheres, and the entire order of that creative scheme, on which Hindoo Metaphysicians and speculated for thousands of years, and which the Egyptians had inscribed in colossal monuments, whose permanence will almost bid defiance to the destroying scythe of time.

The Cabalistic writings, besides the veiled mysticism with which they treat philosophical theories, contain directions for healing the sick, exorcising evil spirits, invoking good Angels and Planetary spirits; also, for the exercise of magical powers over winds, waves and elements generally. These powers are to be procured through purity of life, conduct and thought; strict attention to ablutions, purifications, prayers, the use of talismans, spells, charms, ceremonial rites, and other methods too familiar now to the reader to need further recital. The Cabalists put implicit faith in the use of sacred names, and the combination of certain numbers.

They rehearse seventy-two names of Deity, and affirm that according to the method in which they are written and pronounced, such will be the amount of virtue evolved from their use.

The system of numerals vaguely laid down in the Cabala is evidently a ray derived from the Egyptian figure before alluded to, as manifested in the building of the Great Pyramid, but still more lucidly defined in Pythagorean Philosophy, whilst the allusions so often made to the unity of design manifest throughout the universe, is a mixture of the ideas derived from Zoroaster, the Chaldean system of planetary correspondences, and a large infusion of Greek philosophy. The Cabala and Zohar are curious specimens of literature; compendiums of Eastern ideas, and fully sufficient examples of that style of writing justly termed Cabalistic, but when the full meaning of their obscure expressions is arrived at, the student will find broader, fairer, and more original fields of study in the elder nations, in their grand monuments, their most ancient writings, and above all, in the stately and inspired utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. One chapter of the sublime Isaiah, will convey a far higher conception of the relations between man and his God, than whole pages of the mystic Zohar, and the books of Ezekiel and Revelations, contain all the mysteries so elaborately concealed in Cabalistic writings; in short, we cannot promise our readers any higher results from their study, than such as many be attained by the perusal of other works on the antiquities of the East or initiation into the rites of modern Free Masonry. in the celebrated Rosicrucian diagram of Ezekial's wheel, the whole heart of the mystery is disclosed. Therein will be found the six ascending signs of the Zodiac representing Heaven, Good, the ascent of the human Soul, the Universe, or Macrocosm; in the six descending signs are all the opposite principles of evil, the fall of man, the descent of the Soul into matter, etc., etc., etc. in this consists all the mystery of Cabalism.

The succession of ideas representing the same primal thought in the varied but ever progressive intelligence of different nations, in different epochs of time, always present old truths in novel points of view. This is essentially illustrated in the history of Spiritism. The same fundamental principles underlie the whole structure of human and spiritual intercourse, and whether we study the relations that unite the two worlds from a Hindoo or European point of view, in the year 1 or our own time, we shall find that Magnetism and Psychology are the only keys which ever did or ever will unlock the gates of the Spiritual Kingdom, whilst the Spiritism or magic of different nationalities and times are only rife with examples of the various modes in which these two stupendous attributes of body and soul may be employed.

Learned men spend years in attempting to interpret the mystic raptures of Cabalism, whilst the stately old Jewish Bible lies open to their view, presenting an array of curious and varied literature, which far exceeds in valuable suggestion and breadth of information, every other ancient work extant save the Hindoo Vedas, or Persian Zendavesta. The direct simplicity of Genesis, the elaborate details concerning Egyptian customs, manners, and modes of worship brought to light in the other books of the Pentateuch, the startling accounts of angelic ministry with which every page abounds - the sublime imagery of the Hebrew Prophets, and the curious insight which their denunciations afford into the nature and universality of the idolatrous practices they protest against; the exquisite pathos and beauty of the New Testament teachings, the mixture of high-toned morality and mystic Gnosticism of the Epistles, and the clue to all the ancient mysteries afforded by the writings of Ezekiel, Daniel and John in the Apocalypse, combine to render the Hebrew Bible one of the most remarkable and notable specimens of ancient literature now extant.

It is a book which must compel the skeptic either to pronounce the dictum of willful falsehood and causeless imposture against all ancient history, or else to acknowledge that there must in olden time, if not now, have been a substratum of truth, in the immense array of spiritual demonstrations claimed to have been rendered in the days of antiquity.

The Bible is a book of Spiritism; an Arbatel of Magic, a storehouse of Oriental knowledge, and as such, commands itself to the earnest seeker after magical lore and spiritualistic light.

There were periods in the history of the Jews, when the prophetic afflatus was lost, quenched, as it would seem, by the idolatrous perversity of the people and their devotion to other rites than those enjoined by their Priests and Prophets.

Such was the interregnum that occurred after the death of Samuel; and again after the closing up of the Prophetic era in the person of Malachi, called from thence "the seal of Prophecy." With the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, a new era dawned upon the world, not only in relation to the sublime teachings which he inculcated, and the good words by which he sealed his commission, but by the strictly human evidences of magnetic and psychologic power which resulted from his mission.

All history proves that there are mental as well as physical epidemics; contagious affections of the mind as well as of the body.

When a great reformatory thinker appears in the arena of human life - when such a one is endowed moreover with that mysterious charge of Astral fluid which effects cures of disease, and produces other magnetic phenomena on all who come within his influence - look to see that combination of mental and physical power diffusing itself far beyond the sphere of its immediate source.

From such magnetic and psychologic influences arose that irresistible tide of religious opinion which spread throughout the East from the minds of inspired teachers like Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha and Christ. Such was the source of those mental and physical epidemics which imparted belief in, and power to effect, the practices of witchcraft in the middle ages; which influenced the French Prophets of the Cevennois with a mighty enthusiasm equal in effect to the ecstasies of Indian Fakeers; which animated the Ecstatics at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, and rendered the "Convulsionaires" insensible to pain; which exhibited itself in demoniacal possessions in the multitudes who made up the ghastly records of Witches and Wizards in Scotland, New England, Sweden, and in later times, in the Valley of Morzine - in short, in all cases of mental epidemic, whether it take the shape of that enthusiasm which enabled frail women, young children and feeble old men to court the agonies of martyrdom during the first centuries of the Christian era, or that subjugation of sense and reason to the control of evil spirits, which marked the madness of witchcraft.

We shall conclude this section by a supplement giving extracts from an old work, entitled "Moses and Aaron," or an account of the civil and ecclesiastical rites of the ancient Hebrews, by Thos. Godwyn, B.D., published at London in 1628.

In these curious excerpts the reader will find correct and graphic descriptions of the various kinds of divination, etc.l, whether lawful or forbidden, practiced by the Jews of all.